Räthzel discusses different ways of thinking the society–nature relationship: nature as social, as sympoiesis, humans and non-human nature 'working together', capital as a producer and product of nature, capital as a destroyer of nature. These conceptualisations do not account sufficiently for the centrality of work as the mediator between human and non-human nature. Merging Marx's concept of work with Moore's analysis of capitalism as exploiting waged and appropriating unpaid work and with Haug's notion of gender relations as relations of production it is argued, could provide a framework for understanding the production of the means of life and the production of life (care work paid and unpaid) as processes of communicating vessels. This could also help to link hitherto separate studies of labour environmentalism, environmental justice, and care work.